Brian Walton, and many other great clerks, doubt the truth of these latter statements, and think there are at least 1,200,000 letters in the Bible."

But, after all this, it may be asked, What have the Masorites done to preserve the purity of the text? Much of their labor was, doubtless, unprofitable; their enumeration of the words, letters, and points, their childish conjectures and puerile remarks, were never of any value. But many Jews and Christians, says Eichhorn, have censured them too bitterly. We must thank them for restoring readings from very ancient manuscripts, perhaps older than the time of Christ, at least far older than the best of Kennicott's authorities. Masora is the only source whence we can derive information to aid us in correcting our modern manuscripts. It has done much to preserve the purity of the text, but it could not do all; "for the sacred fount had been troubled by wild waters before the Masorites threw up their dam." Before their time, errors had stolen upon the text, which they could not file away, with all their painstaking. Long before them, mystical heads had

с

The

[Walton, Prol. viii. 8. Eichhorn, § 143, sqq. For a list of the passages containing unusual letters, &c., see Walton, Prol. viii. 4—11, or a more copious account of all these matters in Buxtorf, Tiberias, 1. c. ch. xii. — xix. The Tiberias is a classic work on the subject, and its reader will wonder equally at the painful diligence of the author, and the folly of the writers he quotes or comments upon. The following table shows the number of times each letter occurs in the Hebrew Bible, and is taken from Walton, Prol. viii. 8.

been making sport with the Hebrew Bible, and, to justify their folly, had removed and misplaced consonants, and mangled words, in the most capricious manner. Before their time, copies were found of such different value, that the Talmud hazarded a classification of the manuscripts. Is it not probable that the Masorites, in the sixth century, founded their chief recension of the text on the best manuscripts then extant? After their time, the "hedge" they had placed about the Bible. was often overleaped. Where is the manuscript which is-I will not say accurately written, but accurately corrected after the masoretic recension? Finally, it is much to be regretted that, in the Masora, the early and later recensions of the Jews are confounded together; in short, that we can no longer separate the old masoretic recension from the new. But the present condition of the text would have been far worse if the Masorites had not made their attempt.]"

§ 92.

EASTERN AND WESTERN READINGS

At the end of the second edition of Bomberg's Rabbinical Bible, Rabbi Jacob Ben Chajim' added a list — of which no one knows the author or date of the

Walton, Prol. viii. 27, makes a mistake when he says these readings were published in the edition of Felix Pratensis. Others have copied the error; but it is corrected by Bruns, in Kennicott, Diss. Gen. § 41. The list may be found in Drusius, De recta Ling. Heb. Pronunciatione, and in Walton, Bib. Polyg. vol. vi.

See Buxtorf, Anticrit. p. 510. Morinus, p. 409, thinks he has found this list in some old MSS. of the Bible. Elias Levita, Vor. zu Mas. Hammas, p. 35, places it in the eighth century; but, according to his calculation, the

various readings of the Babylonian and Palestine Jews,

All these

to the number of 216-220. All these except two, which refer to relate merely to the consonants; therefore the comparison of manuscripts from which these readings arose must have been made in a time before the vowel points were added to the text. For the most part, these variants relate to trifles, and frequently to the Keri and Kethib. They are not always confirmed by the western manuscripts." If this list is authentic and correct, it shows that the Babylonian Masorites kept pace with those of Palestine.

Talmud must have closed with the end of the seventh century. Notwithstanding this, his opinion has been generally followed. [See Eichhorn, § 131. Jahn, p. 394.] But, according to the combinations of Gesenius, Gesch. Heb. Sprache, p. 202, it must be dated earlier. [The two rival schools of Palestine and Babylon continued to flourish from the sixth to the eleventh century, and by repeated transcriptions at each, two families of MSS. were founded; but the difference between the two related "rather to orthography than to orthodoxy," as Buxtorf has said, 1. c. p. 510.]

[Jer. vi. 6. Amos iii. 6. It is conjectured by some that these two references were added at a later date; for they presuppose the existence of a pointed text, which was not known when the catalogue was made.]

Cappellus, vol. i. p. 426, sqq. Buxtorf, Anticrit. p. 511, sqq. [This catalogue contains no variants from the Pentateuch. Jahn attempts to explain this remarkable fact by supposing that the Pentateuch was transcribed and corrected with greater care than the other books, p. 394. Whoever the author of this catalogue was, or whenever he lived, it is certain either that he made it very carelessly, or used MSS. very different from our present editions of the Bible; for he departs widely from them in giving the western readings. Cappellus, p. 423.]

Cappellus, 1. c. p. 423, sqq. [The following are three of the most remarkable of these readings:

d See Zeibich, De Dissens. Orient. et Occident. in Elrich, Coll. Opusc. vol. ii.

§ 93.

COMPLETION OF THE PUNCTUATION OF THE TEXT. READ-
INGS OF BEN ASHER AND BEN NAPHTALI.

There is, also, in the Bibles of Buxtorf and Bomberg, and in the London Polyglot, a catalogue of various readings, by Rabbi Aaron Ben Asher, and Rabbi Jacob Ben Naphtali, from the eleventh century." The former follows the western, the latter the eastern Jews."

These variants relate solely to the vowels and accents, from which it has been thought that, at their time, the punctuation of the text was completed, and the unpointed text was out of use."

[These variants amount to eight hundred and sixtyfour in the Bibles of Buxtorf and Bomberg; but Walton has somewhat enlarged their number from an old manuscript. It may be said that Ben Asher and Ben Naphtali put the last hand to the system of punctuation; and perhaps its introduction, supported by the authority of such distinguished teachers, led to the neglect of the unpointed manuscripts, and is the cause why no Hebrew manuscripts have come down to us from a date earlier than the eleventh century, while we have Greek and

"The former was a Palestine, the latter a Babylonian Jew. Both, perhaps, were presidents of academies, according to Gedaliah. They lived about 1034. Buxtorf, De Punct. Antiq. i. 15. Walton, Prol. iv. § 9. Maimonides, in Hilc. Sept. Thoræ, viii. 4, mentions a manuscript of the Bible, which was corrected by Ben Asher.

с

Elias Levita, 1. c. p. 37. But compare Mercer, in Gen. xli. 50.

Elias, 1. c. Walton, Prol. viii. 29. There is an exception to this in

;by Ben Asher , שַׁלְהֶבֶת יָהּ ,is divided into two words שַׁלְהֶבֶרְיָה :6 .Cant. viii

but the sense is the same in both cases.

d Walton, Prol. iv. 8.

p. 102, sq.

Eichhorn, § 133. Michaelis, Or. Bib. vol. xviii.

Syriac manuscripts from a much greater antiquity. Our printed editions, for the most part, follow the oriental pointing and accentuation.]"

§ 94.

HISTORY OF THE TEXT UNTIL THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.

After the time when the text appears to have become established, the manuscripts, it is probable, became more and more uniform with the Masora. But they were not all uniform, as it appears from the numerous unmasoretic readings found in the manuscripts. However, after this time, no important alterations could be made in the text.

C

[In the eleventh century, the Jews were driven from their seats in the East, and, for the most part, took refuge in Europe. They seem to have introduced the pointed manuscripts, and a greater regard for grammatical study of the Hebrew. To this latter cause, perhaps, we are to ascribe the superiority of the manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries over those of an earlier date. The rabbins of this period, Maimonides, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and Jarchi, often cite a text different from that now in use.]"

Reverence for the Scriptures, so carefully fostered by the Masora, would scarcely allow any alterations made to suit the Targums or the science of grammar, then

[Cappellus, 1. c. p. 439, sqq. Jahn, 1. c. p. 344.]

De Rossi, Diss. prelim., prefixed to book iv. of his Varr. Lect. p. xix. Kennicott, Diss. Gen. § 50, has collected proofs of the prevalent diversities of the text at this period, viz., from about 1000 to 1450 A. C.

d [Cappellanus, Mare Rabbinicum infidum; 1667, p. 58, 72, 187, et al. Michaelis, Or. Bib. vol. xviii. p. 102. Kennicott, 1. c. §51, sqq.]